THE RAILWAYS OF INDIA.* CAPTAIN Davtosox is the least thing

prosy, and a little given to that particular variety of talkee-talkee known in sceptical circles in India as "a bazaar sermon," i.e., a sermon to prove that it is Christian to make profits ; but he has produced a very valuable book. He did not write it because "Railways in India are proving themselves to be mighty agencies for the improvement of that empire," for as yet they have only made Indians a little richer ; nor is India, "the man asleep," a bit the more like "the man awake" because it is possible to perform a useless pilgrimage to an obscene idol at forty miles an hour instead of four ; but still the book was north writing. A more picturesque writer would, we think, have made a little more of scenery, and of the men whom the railway work brought into prominent relief,—men some of them of very high mark as practical engineers, who would never have had a chance at home, but who in India constructed works in which their European rivals scarcely as yet believe. The inability of all Indian officials to believe that Indian employe:s outside the Services can be great men,—the sort of feeling which induced Calcutta officials to ignore Mr. Ferguson, and to stare with surprise when a German traveller asked for Mr. Blyth, held in Germany to be among the first living ornithologists, but in Bengal considered "an uneovenanted servant,"—is not quite absent from this volume, leading, for example, to a very cold estimate of Mr. Turnbull, a man whose works are surpassed, if at all, by those of Stephenson alone ; but these are the only criticisms we have to make, and perhaps even these are scarcely fair. A book succeeds if it is what it is intended to be, and this was intended to be an accurate and, so to speak, semi-official history of Indian Railways, of the great group of undertakings which now intersect a continent, and on which depends the safety of more than eighty millions of British capital. ,Any shareholder in those railways who wants to be told, not in the litte'rateur's fashion, but in the scientific official's fashion, how the railways arose, what were their difficulties, what are their difficulties, what is the "lie" of the country they traverse, what their business is, what their cost is, what their returns come from, in short, any of the facts which directly interest him, will find them set forth in this volume, very clearly, very patiently, and with an entire absence of party or professional bias. Captain Davidson is fairness itself, and he has not a trace of the grand intellectual vice of Anglo-Indians,—the disposition to prostrate themselves before mere vastness, to believe that a railway, for instance, must be great because one of its branches is as big as the Great Northern trunk. He states every fact simply as a fact, exaggerates nothing, diminishes nothing, and clearly does not care two straws what judgment any shareholder may form of any particular line. His special form of credulity, if he has one,—and it does not interfere with his judgment,—is in believing that a quick mode of locomotion will tend to make a Hindoo a Christian. Upon every other point he is the most coldly reasonable of writers, as coldly reasonable when describing a marvellous achievement in his own profession as when drawing his railway map, the clearest we ever remember to have seen. It is really a beautiful map, so reticent, with so much omitted that it breaks the heart of a mapseller to omit, that the shareholder can see at a glance what his line means. He has only to put this piece of tissue-paper on a really good big map of India, say, the official one published by W. Allen and Co., and read the description of his line, and he will know as much about it and its chances as out of India he can hope to learn.

It would be useless in an article like this to attempt to condense Captain Davidson's already condensed account of the origin of Indian Railways, of the absurd difficulties by which they were impeded, of their ultimate adoption and detailed history. All that is most valuable,—though Captain Davidson might have said a cordial word about Sir Macdonald Stepheuson's warfare of years with every conceivable variety of fool—but the chapters which will strike Indian Railway shareholders are those on the cost of construction. Very wild ideas originally prevailed upon this subject. Many worthy but unpractical persons had, we believe, originally an idea that railways in India would cost almost nothing. 1Ve have seen, if we remember rightly, though Captain Davidson does not mention them, demonstrations on paper that railways in India could be built for £3,000 a mile, — a little more than the coat of good rails, — and £8,000 a mile was for years accepted as the official ideal. They really cost about 120,000. The shareholders, indeed, enjoyed some prima facie advantages of no slight account. Government were to give the land. 'Phis agreement, a really noble bit of generosity, has been very little talked about, but has been rigidly adhered to, and Captain Davidson calculates will cost the Government of India for the railways already sanctioned more than ten millions sterling, or say a tenth of the entire capital expended, for which vast benefaction no direct return whatever is to be made to the State. Indeed, we are not sure the gift is not larger, for Captain Davidson has been very fair in his calculations as against the State, and does not apparently take into account the increase of value every railway gives to the land of the provinces it passes through. Then there are no Parliamentary expenses at all, or legal, the total amount debited under those heads being for the East Indian,. £4,093; and Great Indian Peninsula, £1,124, while it was calculated that labour would be very cheap indeed. So it was, but the supervision of labour was very dear, and the demand even for native labour doubled daily wages almost at a blow. We may now take skilled labour in India as worth a shilling, and unskilled labour sixpence a day, on the lowest computation, each man hired at that price being worth, say, a third of a good English navvy. The gradients were easy, but the bridges were very numerous and costly, a single section of 32 miles in the Mirzapore district having five of the first class. "Over the river Ka.djourah there were three openings of 80 feet, spanned by iron girders ; and over another stream near there was one similar opening. The river Bulwan required eight arches, the Kurnowtee five, and the Ooglah three, all of GO feet each. The piers, with their cut-water and pilasters, the abutments, wing walls, string course, and parapet, were all of dressed ashlar, and the arch stones were carefully finished. The total amount of masonry in the division was about 11 million of cubic feet ; bud, in addition to the bridges mentioned, included four viaducts, with a total of seventeen openings of 17-feet iron girders, and ten viaducts with twelve openings of 12-feet girders ;" whilst the Tonse, just beyond, was 1,000 feet wide, and the Soane, on the edge of the county, required a bridge of 1,577 yards or seven furlongs in length and 82 feet high. Then there is dreadful worry' about sleepers. Captain Davidson's pages upon this point, which will one day affect every Indian railway project, are, as usual, moderate, accurate, and, valuable. "Supposing that sleepers of Indian woods only be used, the number of sleepers required for laying a single line over the 5,600 miles of sanctioned railway at 1,760 sleepers per mile, is 9,856,000, and the renewals annually are so numerous that a like number would be needed about every ten or fifteen years.f Assuming that square-heart wood be insisted upon, sappy and half-round sleepers being rejected, then as according to Dr. Brandis, the Government Conservator of Forests, from three to five sleepers only can be cut from one tree, 31 or 11 million of timber trees would be needed at every fifteenth year. But as teak and sal trees take a period, variously estimated at from twentyfive to thirty years to come to maturity, and as but few trees of any value or age are reported as left in forests at all adjacent to the lines of railway, the immense difficulty, or rather impossibility of procuring an adequate number of sleepers from the timber of India alone, will be evident." Be it remembered, Indian forests, so far from being inexhaustible are very limited, the " jungle " trees being utterly useless for any such purpose. Sleepers can be procured from Europe, but they cost money, and all substitutes of stone or iron have failed. Captain Davidson gives an account of all the woods tried in India, but it is still clear that anybody who could invent a cheap and durable sleeper, say, who could make brick slightly elastic, would confer an indefinite benefit on all Railway Companies. Indian Railways therefore, though cheaply built in comparison with English lines, have cost much money, and Captain Davidson, who, be it remembered, has many years' personal experience of them, gives the following as their probable ultimate cost :—

Doable Lino Single Line

per Mile. per Mile.

East Indian Railway ... £22,000 £15,000 Groat Indian Peninsula 16,000: 13,000 Madras 12.000 Short lengths of these Bombay and Barodah 20,000 lines are laid with a Punjab 10,000 double track.

Scindo 0 190 f 41 miles double, and an 1. expensive terminus.

Calcutta and South20.000 A costly terminus at Eastern Calcutta.

Short lengths of these Eastern Bengal 17,000 lines are laid with Great Southern 7,700 a double track.

The debt of the Companies for interest has been reduced to /12,000,000 for all India, and Captain Davidson evidently believes that the great trunk Railways will all clear themselves of time guarantee. Upon this point, however, he is exceedingly cautious, not to say just a little over-reticent. He gives a very definite opinion as to the comparative chances of each line, but for the rest restricts himself to an official table now rather out of date, but from which the reader may draw this rough but sound deduction. Any great Indian railway which is earning £45 per mile per week of gross receipts is doing very well indeed, and going to declare an extra dividend. That is a brutally rough rule, but it is evidently correct, and is worth remembering. Captain Davidson enters into no speculation, as we have said, on profits ; but he believes that traffic will increase, and we may quote his final sentence as at once pleasant to shareholders and illustrative of the only defect in his book :—

" But although tho financial position of railwaYs in India is thus, on the whole, satisfactory now, while promising far larger results in the future, yet the return from their construction to which the Government have mainly looked has always been the material and social advance Mr. Turnbull considers that 226 new sleepers per mile per annum would be required for maintenance, and 10 per cent. more for sidings. On this calculation 1.385.800 of sleepers would be needed yearly for Indian railways, which at five sleepers a tree would require 277,760 trees to be felled in the forests of India per annum.

Ghat lines excepted. Many failures arising in some degree from Indifferent work have recently come to light, and the reconstruction consequently necessary will probably swell the first cost of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway per mile to the figure given for the East Indian Railway. • • meat which facility of communication produces. In this respect, nothing remains to be desired. Commerce is annually increasing, wages are rising, manufactories are springing up, skilful and intelligent artizans are being educated, and the social barriers of caste and prejudice seem gradually yielding; and there is a hope that, combined with the prosperity, wealth, and civilization which have been created and fostered by the railways of India, the blessings also of a spiritual Christianity, based on the truth of God's Word. may ore long spread extensively over the length and breadth of that land, which has for so many ages remained covered with the pall of apathy and vice that false religions of every kind invariably throw over the countries in which they exist."

Pall ! Well, in one sense the metaphor may be true, but one winces a little to hear that summary condemnation of Athens ; while as to the railways, does Captain Davidson really believe that quick locomotion, cheap carriage, and drunken engine-drivers spread Christianity half as fast as a single native apostle would ? And how will the railway help to develop him ?

NAPOLEON AT FONTAINEBLEAU AND ELBA.* Wiru the exception of the first 150 pages of this book, which call themselves a memoir of Sir Neil Campbell, and are really an unnecessary account of his military history, Mr. Maclachlan's contribution to our knowledge of the great Napoleon is both valuable and interesting. Sir Neil Campbell's diary was kept faithfully, the truly prominent figure being always prominent, and the diarist, for the most part, retreating into the background. We do not cast any reflection on Sir Neil Campbell or his nephew when we say that this is as it should be. It must be evident that a book of this kind can only be read for its subject. The interest we feel in the first captivity centres in the captive. As we should not very much care for a description of Elba at the time when it was constituted a separate principality, and given into the possession of the Emperor Napoleon, so we are not very curious to know the past history of the British Conunissioner who accompanied Napoleon to his new residence, and kept a sort of volunteer watch over his movements. In the Me of Sir Hudson Lowe our feelings would be different. But Sir Hudson's Lowe's character was a very important element in the second captivity. It is not every one who would have undertaken the work of insulting a great man whenever he spoke to him. Sir Neil's Campbell's task was much easier. His instructions, it is true, were not very definite. Lord Castlereagh informed him that he was to reside in the island of Elba till further orders, if Napoleon should consider that the presence of a British officer could be of use in protecting the island and his person against insult or attack. It was the wish of the Prince Regent to afford "every facility and protection" to Napoleon's "secure asylum." No doubt these words convey more than one meaning. It might be that Sir Neil Campbell was to take care that the secure asylum was not broken from within, as well as not attacked from without. There were alarms about time Dey of Algiers, who was said to have "instructed his cruisers to seize all vessels sailing under the flag of Elba, and the person of the Sovereign of that island also, should any opportunity happily offer of getting hold of him," but the real danger came from Napoleon's own restlessness. Sir Neil, at least, felt this, though he could not persuade the Ministers at home to take due precautions. Although, as he says, Napoleon "appeared to be a sort of prisoner of England under my charge," and although it was "universally supposed in Italy and publicly stated that Great Britain is responsible to the other Powers for the detention of Napoleon's person, and that I am time executive agent for this purpose," as Napoleon himself believed, yet Sir Neil was really powerless. A manuscript letter of Sir Walter Scott's, quoted in this volume, is express upon the subject. "The whole correspondence of Sir Neil with the British Ministers has been seen by me, and it is but justice to say that he repeatedly represented the difficulties of his situation, and desired instructions which do not seem to have been sent." And Lord Castlereagh himself said in the House of Commons, "I repeat that our Government never undertook a police establishment at Elba. Colonel Campbell was certainly there for the purpose of occasionally communicating with our Government upon such matters as might pass under his observation both there and in Italy, where, at that time, we had no accredited agents ; he was there, at first, merely as one of the conductors, according to the treaty; and I afterwards suffered him to remain between that island and Leghorn for the purpose I have mentioned ; but nothing more was ever contemplated. It would have

been out of Colonel Campbell's power to have attempted anything further—he could not have done it ; for the fact was that although at first treated with familiarity by Bonaparte, his visits were subsequently disapproved of ; latterly he found the greatest difficulty in obtaining an interview with him, so completely did the latter surround himself with imperial etiquette." Our treatment of Napoleon had therefore the double advantage of making him think he was a prisoner and leaving him free to escape. We atoned for our fault afterwards. St. Helena showed him what was really meant by a dungeon, and in the contrast presented by Sir Neil Campbell to Sir Hudson Lowe, he could see that there was a difference between a commissioner and a gaoler.

We do not think Sir Neil Campbell a wholly unprejudiced observer, but though he may have been naturally alive to the unfavourable side of Napoleon's character, it is plain that, except on the first few occasions, the Emperor did not try to ingratiate himself with his supposed keeper. The judgments passed by Napoleon on those who had not served him as implicitly as he wished do not speak well for his nature. It particularly struck Sir Neil that when Napoleon laid the death of the Duke of Enghien at Talleyrand's door, "he showed much enmity towards Talleyrand, but very little emotion or regret at the circumstance itself." Then Napoleon's way of talking seems to have impressed Sir Neil with a feeling of his charlatanism. We see this in the report of the conversation on the battle of the Nile between Napoleon and Captain Adye. But it appears still more strongly in the account of Napoleon's interview with a Norwegian. "What is the population of Norway?" asked the Emperor. "Two millions, Sire," was the reply. "One million eight hundred thousand," observed Napoleon immediately. Sir Neil Campbell's reflection is, "Some of Napoleon's admirers will say in this, as in so many other instances, that it shows wonderful knowledge and minutely correct information,—unless, indeed, he had referred to his library to prepare himself for the interview." Under the circumstances, this may not appear improbable. Yet Sir Neil does not confine himself to this one side of Napoleon's character. Many of the other conversations they had together, many of the incidents of the journey from Fontainebleau to Elba, and of Napoleon's life in the island, are eminently suggestive. The first interview Sir Neil Campbell bad with the Emperor was at Fontainebleau, the day after his arrival. "I saw before me," he says, "a short, active-looking man, who was rapidly pacing the length of his apartment, like some wild animal in its cell. He was dressed in an old green uniform, with gold epaulets, blue pantaloons, and red,top-boots, unshaven, uncombed, with the fallen particles of snuff scattered profusely upon his upper lip and breast." On this, as on one other occasion, he spoke very highly of the Duke of Wellington. He was especially pleased by the Duke's reply to the Abb6 de Pradt, when that former chaplain of Napoleon's was casting reflections on his military genius. A Frenchman present had referred in answer to the glories of Napoleon's Italian campaigns, and the Duke of Wellington, being appealed to, said that the success which the Emperor had obtained in the last campaign, between the Seine and the Marne, was equally great. Sir Neil's comparison of Napoleon to a wild animal in its cell recurs to us more than once during this diary. In one place we are told that the Emperor's energy is preternatural. "He appears to take so much pleasure in perpetual movement, and in seeing those who accompany him sink under fatigue. I do not think it to be possible for him to sit down to study, or any pursuits of retirement, as proclaimed by him to be his intention, so long as his state of health permits corporeal exercise." One day, after being on foot from five in the morning till three in the afternoon, inspecting frigates and transports, he rode for three hours pour se defatiguer.' Later on, Sir Neil remarks that "Napoleon seems to have lost all habits of study and sedentary application." When not shifting from one of his residences in the island to another, and making changes and improvements, he had fallen into a state of complete inactivity, which ought to have appeared more dangerous than the height of restlessness. Yet it was this very time which Sir Neil chose for the inapt remark that Napoleon seemed quite resigned to his retreat. The mistake was not so great as that of an English Under-Secretary, who declared that Napoleon was altogether forgotten in Europe the day before the escape from Elba. But Sir Neil recovered himself in a very short time, and became more and more watchful. He was absent from the island when the escape took place. On his way back from Leghorn he must have been almost in eight of Napoleon's flotilla. But he had a very strong presentiment that all was not right. When he embarked at Leghorn he at once asked the Captain of the English man-of-war which had just come from Elba if anything extraordinary had happened. The captain assured him that he had left Napoleon on the island two days before. But by the time Sir Neil landed in Elba the bird had flown. There was a sudden bustle among the French troops on the island in the afternoon of the 26th of February. A few hours later they all marched out of the fortifications and embarked on board Napoleon's brig and two other vessels. Napoleon himself came on board at nine in the evening, just one hour after Sir Neil had embarked at Leghorn. This coincidence in time is not a little singular. But it is plain that if the English had known what Napoleon was doing they would have taken the law into their own hands. Sir Neil admits in his diary that he was ready to give orders to Captain Adye to intercept any of Napoleon's vessels, and, "in case of their offering any resistance, to destroy them." "I am confident," he adds, "that both he and I will be justified by our Sovereign, our country, and the world, in proceeding to any extremity upon our own responsibility in a case of so extraordinary a nature." No doubt, had Napoleon himself been on board a ship which was so destroyed, and had perished with it, Lord Liverpool would have welcomed the solution. A soldier who will act without instructions is often the beat servant of those who cannot originate, but who, when a step has once been taken, are not afraid of any consequences.

One of the points brought out most strongly by Sir Neil Campbell is Napoleon's unpopularity both in Elba and in certain parts of France. On the journey from Fontainebleau his carriage was very nearly being stormed by a mob, and in consequence, the Emperor "mounted one of the horses, and dressed in a plain greatcoat, wearing, too, a Russian cloak, and a common round hat with a white cockade, rode on in advance of the carriages, accompanied only by a courier." In this disguise he talked to the landlady of the first post-house they came to, and probably heard no good of himself, for she asked when Napoleon would pass, and abused him. He was so afraid of designs on his life that he would neither eat nor drink at the post-house, and afterwards he changed coats and caps with the Commissioners, calling himself alternately Colonel Campbell and Lord Burghersh. The disguise would hardly have imposed on any one of the least discernment. Any person who understood English would know that the name Campbell was not pronounced " Combell," which seems to have been Napoleon's version of it. But these precautions probably set Napoleon's mind at ease. It was from the same motive that he would not cross to Elba in a French man-of-war, but demanded an English frigate. Being gratified in this wish, however, he insisted on being received on board with royal honours, and when it was represented to him that salutes were never fired after sunset, he proposed to remain on shore till the next morning. To this the Commissioners would not consent, and so naval etiquette had to yield to political urgency. This was certainly one of the points on which resistance would have been useless. Sir Neil Campbell seems to have been fully awake to the necessity of humouring his quasi-captive. The impression conveyed by the diary is that the Emperor was fortunate in his British Commissioner, though humouring was not always sufficient in itself, and though the " Combell " regime suddenly broke down under an unusual pressure.